


His Friend Too

by notquitepunkrock



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: (and on a tiktok i made but never posted), Angst, Based on a song, Canon Compliant, Confrontations, Post-The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson), Pre-The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson), Sort of a Happy Ending?, at least insofaras i remember, grover gets Angry, its a framed narrative folks, mentions of thalia's death, protective grover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25330186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquitepunkrock/pseuds/notquitepunkrock
Summary: Everyone seems to forget that Luke was Grover's friend too. Grover hasn't forgotten.a missing scene in which Luke talks to Grover sometime after asking Annabeth to run away with him but before the final battles of the Titan War.
Relationships: Luke Castellan & Grover Underwood
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	His Friend Too

**Author's Note:**

> this is literally spawned by me making a grover cosplay tiktok like two months ago to Wolf In Sheep's Clothing by Set It Off. that and the fact that i love grover underwood with all my heart and he deserves more appreciation. 
> 
> as always, much love goes to my lovely beta molly, who has been helping me edit my fics and cheering my shitty writing on for FIVE YEARS NOW we stan middle school friends who stick with you into their sophomore year of college even though you dropped out. she turns 20 on sunday so this fic is also her birthday present! happy birthday molly ilysm thank you for being my friend for nine fuckin years lmao
> 
> (also in this house we don't condone rr's recent actions in reference to callouts about his casual racism. white men don't get to decide what is offensive to POC! but also i reread the series with my sister like six months ago and now i am stuck back in pjo hell. fandom has nuance.)

After the first war, Grover was content to let others take over. 

He and Percy and Annabeth had spend too long on the front lines, had spent their formative years as soldiers. They’d seen too much. Even as he was preoccupied with duties as the new Lord of the Wild, he felt as though he could finally relax. There was space to breathe. The world wasn’t coming apart at the seams, with only his best friend there to stop it.

But sometimes, in the dead of the night, Grover remembered. 

The look on a fourteen-year-old boy’s face as he smirked, the way the low light of their hiding place turned his hair golden, the way that he would throw himself in front of Annabeth, of Thalia… of Grover.

There was one thing that many forgot when recounting their tales of Luke Castellan, in the memory of his betrayal of Annabeth and Percy, in the reminders that he had been the one to nearly kill Thalia’s tree. Even they seemed to have forgotten that Luke had been Grover’s friend too. 

He had tried, so hard, to keep them safe - all of them, all three of the children he’d stumbled upon. At times, he’d felt like little more than a hindrance. After all, Thalia had gotten halfway across the country before she’d even met Luke, and the pair of them had made it all the way to Virginia before they found Annabeth. And Annabeth herself had managed to survive on her own at only seven. Grover felt that maybe, just maybe, they would have made it to camp without him.

Maybe, without him to make wrong turns, to mix up the directions in his fear, they would have made it without losing Thalia.

(Even after she came back, even after she swore there were no hard feelings, Grover still felt achingly responsible for losing Thalia. Sometimes, her pale face would flash behind his eyelids as he slept, forever caught in the moments before Zeus’ intervention. He would never forget the way the light had left her blue eyes, her hand reaching out towards them as her fear began to melt away into Thanatos’ cool embrace.)

It was silly to dwell on now, so Grover shoved it aside.

Better to focus on the trees and the nymphs and the naiads, on stopping the neverending assault on the Wilds before it was too late. 

But.

But there was memory that he had tried so hard to bury. A memory that had only been passed on to Percy in flashes of anger, regret, and pain. 

A memory of Luke standing before him, blue eyes shining with tears. Luke’s breath had hitched in his throat when Grover pulled out a dagger and brandished it. Both of them could see the way that his hand shook when he pointed it at him. Grover had never been one for wielding weapons, and neither of them was sure he could bring himself to use it on someone who he’d once protected with the same ferocity he now had for Percy. 

“Grover, please,” Luke whispered, and there was genuine fear in his voice. The knife’s edge wavered in the air between them. Grover swallowed, and the sound echoed amongst the trees. “You don’t want to hurt me.”

“You tried to kill her,” Grover replied. His large brown eyes shone with tears. He didn’t need to elaborate. Grover could have meant either Annabeth or Thalia, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. It was the same betrayal. 

“He-” Luke stopped, cleared his throat, and stared above Grover’s head. “He has orders. I simply follow them.”

At this, Grover bristled. Every hair on his head seemed to stand on edge. The bases of his horns ached at the tension. “And we mean nothing to you?” he said quietly. “I… I understand me, maybe, but Thalia… Annabeth… they were your family.”

“We were  _ all _ family,” Luke insisted, trying for a charming smile. Unsurprisingly, much of the charm he had been known for at camp was gone. All that was left was a bare shadow of the man who had befriended Percy, who had protected Annabeth, and who had saved Thalia. There was almost nothing left of the boy who had been the first to forgive Grover, long before Annabeth’s tears had resolved into a steely determination. “All four of us. We wouldn’t have survived without you.”

The fingers on Grover’s spare hand curled into a tight fist, and he raised the dagger once more. “And you tried to kill her,” he reiterated. Again, there was no need to clarify. It didn’t make a difference. 

Luke’s smile dropped, and he ducked his head. His eyebrows drew together, and his shoulders hunched. He looked… ashamed. “Grover, I-”

“No,” Grover snapped, the sound a half-shout, half-bleat, that caused a hiding nymph to peer at them from within her tree with fear-widened eyes. “You don’t get to apologize. You don’t get to beg me to run away with you like you did Annabeth. You can’t charm me like you did Percy. You can’t smile and think you’ll win me to your side like you tried to do with Thalia.  _ You tried to kill all of them. _ ”

Luke stared, but he didn’t try to speak again. “The truth is, Luke,  _ they’re _ my family. Not you. You gave up that right four years ago and you will  _ never _ get it back,” Grover’s chin was quivering now. He blinked to keep back tears. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this scared. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this brave. “I will not let you ruin the camp. I will  _ not _ let you take my family.”

Luke stared at him, gobsmacked. His blue eyes flickered suddenly, turning gold for the barest of seconds. Grover stiffened, ready to jump out of the way if Kronos tried to attack, even as Luke’s face crumpled in what looked like pain.

Then the man before him straightened, steeling his face into the cold mask it had become since he had stolen away from camp. The blue returned. There was a knife’s edge to his voice but it was, undeniably, Luke’s voice. “You don’t have a say in what I do, Grover,” he said cooly. “Not anymore.”

Luke turned, walking away through the brush - away from Grover, about to disappear into the forest and, more than likely, set his sights on the camp once more. “Wait!” Grover yelled, his voice breaking in the middle of the word. He cringed. Luke froze in place.

“How do you do it?” he asked quietly, biting on his lip. The dagger still hovered in the air, pointed uselessly at Luke’s retreating back. “How do you sleep easy, knowing what you did to them - to  _ us _ ?”

Luke laughed coldly, and looked back at Grover over his shoulder. For the first time, Grover saw how tired he was, how thin his face had gone. He could see the knobs of his spine through his t-shirt. The bags under his eyes were dark circles that made him look almost skeletal. “I don’t,” he said simply, and then Luke disappeared into the trees.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is overthemoonyforpadfoot if you wanna come chat please quarantine is killing me and i need friends  
> my IT fandom tumblr is eddiesnapback if any of yall are still obsessed with the killer clown movie/book like i am for some godforsaken reason
> 
> comments and kudos are what keep me coming back to writing even after festering in four months of quarantine so please consider helping a person out xx
> 
> thanks for reading! lake xx


End file.
